Dropping like flies in one of the safest spots on Earth

It's all very well the Australian Government issuing warnings to travellers about the dangers of other countries.

But our record in protecting tourists brave enough to journey here is not quite spotless.

Every year Australia kills about 370 innocent visitors. Crocodile attacks and outback disappearances get the most publicity, but a tourist is more likely than an Australian to drown, to be involved in a car crash, and to have a heart attack.

In the months of July and August, suicide becomes a significant cause of tourist death.

More British people die here than any other nationality, but as a proportion of arrivals, men from the Philippines and women from Italy have the highest death rates.

NSW has more tourist deaths than any other state, followed by Queensland.

Men are twice as likely to die on their journeys as women and the age groups most at risk seem to be people 25-34 and people over 55.

All this is revealed in a report on deaths released this month by the Bureau of Statistics, which points out that Australia is actually one of the safest destinations on Earth.

With 5 million short-term visitors a year, the death rate is just 0.01 per cent.

"Australia has high standards in public health, clean drinking water, low levels of infectious diseases, and a well-equipped and co-ordinated medical system," the bureau said.

Nevertheless, 363 tourists died here in 2002, 377 died in 2000, and 371 in 1998.

The major causes were "diseases of the circulatory system" such as heart attacks or strokes (41 per cent, mostly people over 55) and external forces such as collisions and drownings (30 per cent, mostly people under 35).

The bureau notes that only 6 per cent of deaths among Australians are caused by these external forces.

Of the 2244 tourist deaths in the past six years, 22 were the result of assault, 283 were the result of transport accidents, 98 were drownings, and 45 were suicides (which tended to happen in the winter months, and mostly involved people aged between 16 and 24).

It seems more dangerous for Australians to leave the country than for foreigners to come to these shores.

Australians made 3 million journeys overseas in 2002, and 681 of us died there.

The bureau quotes research from the 1990s which suggested that about 18 per cent of Australian travellers' deaths were the result of accidents, 4 per cent were murders, 4 per cent were attributed to drug overdoses, and 35 per cent resulted from heart disease.